Thomas M. Cooley Law School Innocence Project Co-Director Marla Mitchell-Cichon recently wrote an opinion piece for the Lansing State Journal concerning false confession. Here is an excerpt:

When will we learn that innocent individuals can and do confess to crimes they do not commit? Sometimes they even plead guilty.

While
we might find ourselves saying, "never," when imagining ourselves in
such a situation, the truth is confessions and guilty pleas come from
the mouths of the innocent. Of the 208 DNA exonerations nationally,
more than 25 percent of the cases involved false confessions or guilty
pleas.

Michigan should have learned this lesson in 2002 when
Detroit native Eddie Joe Lloyd was found innocent and exonerated of the
1984 rape and murder of 16-year-old Michelle Jackson.

Lloyd was in a mental institution at the time of the investigation
of the Jackson case. He contacted police because he wanted to help
solve the crime. After three police interviews, Lloyd confessed to the
crime. According to the police, Lloyd provided details of the crime
that only the perpetrator could have known.

Hauntingly we have
heard the same claims in the Claude McCollum case in Lansing.
McCollum's "sleepwalking" confession also contained specific details of
the crime. Rest of Article. . . [Mark Godsey]